Historically, the meat industry has, and continues to undergo considerable change. Such change is found not only in methods and apparatus for the treatment of meat, but also in consumer demands, which in turn manifest themselves in demands from retailers and wholesalers.
Increasing consumer demands and regulations relevant to the quality of meat products, particularly at point of sale, together with changes in buying patterns of consumers have lead to the decline of specialist exclusive meat outlets such as butcher shops and the like.
Increased demand for high quality pre-cut and pre-packaged meat sold through supermarkets and non-specialist stores has meant that successful meat producers have had to meet these requirements by offering packaged meat in pre-prepared, ready to cook retail packs and the like.
Significant problems occur in presenting and delivering pre-packaged cuts of meat to consumers under such circumstances. The meat industry is faced with significant costs in meeting the consumer demands as well as high losses by wastage of products through poor shelf life.
One of the factors affecting shelf life of prepared and packaged meat products is the buildup of bacteria on the surface of the meat. Other factors are with colour loss, drip of meat fluids and in extreme cases, deterioration of taste and development of off-odors.
Modified atmosphere packs are of course known, however, in the past these packs have been relatively expensive for meat producers to use and consumers often do not perceive the meat in such packs as fresh.
Further, the packs considerably increase the bulk of the manufactured product and create handling difficulties, particularly as most modified atmosphere packs require a significant volume of gas relative to the meat and in the main, this is generally achieved by providing an upper bubble of plastic film within which the gas is retained, thus leading to significant packaging difficulties, losses through puncturing and the like.
In efficiency terms, it will also be appreciated that a relatively large quantity of gas is required to be supplied to the modified atmosphere packed meat to ensure that at the end of the intended package time, the meat still has adequate gas to retain meat quality and to prevent collapse of the pack. This leads to substantial packing and transportation inefficiencies, particularly where it will be appreciated that in some instances a volume of gas required can equate to the volume of meat housed in a modified atmosphere pack.
Concurrently there is a desire for supermarkets and other non-exclusive product retail organisations to move away from specialist meat handling facilities and staff within the organisation to central preparation of packaged cuts of meat for sale. This move is largely in view of the high cost and inability to dual use such facilities, the attendant hygiene requirements and an inability generally to use butchery staff efficiently.
It has been found in practise that whilst savings can be made utilising a central cutting facility for several retail outlets, offsetting losses occur as a result of the additional time which such central cutting and delivery requires, which inevitably affects available shelf life and leads to many shelf life related problems noted above.
Central cutting additionally creates conditions within the product supply chain where supermarkets can have what are known as "product outages" where stocks of particular products run out before the shelves can be restocked, reducing sale opportunities for the retail outlets.
Consumers perceive the quality of meat at the time of purchase by meat appearance. Hitherto, cuts of meat in prepackaged prepared form often exhibit a fresh bright look for a short period of time after which the effects of ageing become visually apparent. Often the meat quality is still sufficiently high for such meat to be otherwise readily saleable, however, it has been found in practise that the inclusion of packaged meat visually showing effects of age within a display of other meat which is not so affected, can materially detract from the sale of all meat from the display.
Accordingly, there has been a heavy labor need for regular assessment of meat quality by sales staff to regularly monitor shelf life and remove or repackage effected product.
It is thus recognised by the meat industry that an increase in shelf life is highly beneficial to trading economics.